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Wednesday, 10 July 2013

How to evict tenants

First thing you do is contact your insurance agency and they will put you in touch with their solicitor and after submitting hundreds of documents they'll issue a notice of possession through the courts. The courts will deliver this within 48 hours. The tenants have 14 days to provide a defence. The solicitor then instructs the courts to issue the Possession order and if after 14 days from the date of issue, the tenants haven't moved out, you can apply for a warrant for a bailiff and tah dah 6 weeks later you get your house back.

Well that's a load of bollocks...this is what really happens:

Insurance company state they have no record of you, you phone them on May 23rd, you don't find out till June 6th that you're not covered. So you write to the tenants asking them what their intentions are.

Your solicitor starts the ball rolling and you're advised not to have any further contact with the tenants, otherwise harassment charges could be made.

You decide you're not happy with the Insurance company so you make a complaint, they tell you that you are covered, you send them the email they sent you 3 weeks earlier telling you, that you're not covered, so you email them and say, you made a mistake, you refund my costs and they say, they're not responsible for costs incurred before you contacted them, so you tell them to re read the email of complaint that states you're not covered under the policy so having wasted 2 weeks you contact your own solicitor.

I'll let you know when I resolve THAT issue.

You then discover that your solicitor at the cost of £775 didn't submit the possession order on June 27th as they should have done and 2 weeks on you're still waiting as the courts are 'busy'.

Now that you're covered with the Insurance they inform you they'll take over and ask you to return endless forms. This solicitor seems a bit more realistic with a time scale of up to 5 months to get the house back and 1-3 years to recover costs.

But.........

it just gets even better..........

I discover my tenant has done this before, was evicted. The helpful local council have told him to stay put until the warrant for bailiffs is issued. If they leave early they won't qualify for housing. It's also public record (google tenants name and last known address) local paper runs story about theft and fraud and guess what...no reference check carried out on him. Yes, original agent is to blame.

I inform housing that I am homeless due to tenants not paying rent and refusing to move out and that I have a mortgage to pay that I can't afford. The council tell me I can apply for hostel accommodation.

and then.......

There is post, post from Companies House, at my address, informing me a business is being operated from my there. I inform Companies House and they inform me that the tenants aren't the ones running the business it's a bloke from Birmingham. After a bit of googling I find several web sites where the company is listed and inform them all that the business has nothing to do with me and no permission was given to use my address and asked them to remove the listing.

...it gets even better as I'm informed by Action Fraud and Trading Standards that it isn't illegal to use someone else's address to register a company and Companies House informed me it's not their job to check that the business has permission from the property owner.

...but what finished me off was the suggestion from Trading Standards that I wrote to the Director and asked him what he was playing at.....I'll give it a go, but I suspect it'll be me opening the letter as I can assure you....I've never heard of him and he DOESN'T live at MY address.

I only caught a fraction of this on Twitter. What an absolute nightmare for you.

Our situation was stressful enough - constantly being hounded by debt collectors, we even had a bailiff try to break the door down looking for the previous owner. The final straw for me was an aggressive letter from a credit card company threatening to take my house, against the debt someone else owed.

Companies House did act quickly though to strike off the company and that eventually cleared our address from company directories.

So, I thoroughly sympathise with you, wish I could help, but sending best wishes your way. Final thought : email the MP and/or local councillor for the area?

I had a friend who was advised to stay put in a kind of similar situation (they weren't bad tenants though, it was a dodgy landlord but they did keep paying their rent on time to be fair) - who had to wait for that court order as they'd then get higher up the housing list. It's a stupid system and definitely weighted in the tenants balance - and seeing it from your point of view I can't believe how frustrating this all is.

I hope something gets sorted for you soon - and the fact your tenant has done that before is outrageous! As someone who rents we had to do SO much to get into everywhere we've lived, and they're so thorough - at one point we didn't know what we'd do as they wouldn't even consider me as I was on maternity leave (with every intention of going back to work) - I hope things work out for you and you get your house back - good luck x

it's so unfair - I've just seen your update today too. I hope something gets sorted out - what a massive headache, especially if they're earning too - I wish people had more responsibility about other people's properties - are the letting agents not liable in some way for not checking them properly?